Announcing the GOOD Wellness Project

A Message from Our Friends at Walgreens + Vitamin Angels:

Hey GOOD Readers,

Everyone is trying to figure out what “wellness” really means. How do we make choices that allow our bodies to truly thrive? Our daily decisions of what we consume or how much exercise we get represent the choices that have the ability to make us better and healthier every day. Wellness will always mean different things to different people—and that’s the challenge of finding your personal path to well-being. Over the next eight months, we’re going to dig deep into the concept of wellness, demystify the world of vitamins, and learn what our bodies truly need to improve our overall health.

And so we here at Walgreens, together with our partners at Vitamin Angels and GOOD, are excited to launch the GOOD Wellness Project. Through an editorial series, slideshows, a documentary video, and an interactive infographic, we will explore how to make healthier and smarter decisions, especially in the case of our personal nutrition and the role vitamins can play in that.

Why vitamins, you might ask? Vitamins are especially personal to Walgreens—they’re nutrients that are essential for healthy growth, vitality, and general well-being. We know that, for many, basic nutrition is something most don’t even need to think twice about. However, there are many people around the world who suffer from life-threatening illnesses simply because they don’t get enough essential nutrients in their daily diets. Since last year, Walgreens has partnered with Vitamin Angels, helping at-risk populations in need—specifically pregnant women, new mothers, and children under five—gain access to lifesaving and life changing vitamins and minerals.

Lack of proper nutrition can and does have a devastating impact on health. Vitamin A deficiency, for example, is a major cause of preventable blindness in children under five, and almost half of children who lose their sight due to this lacking will die within 12 months. Inadequate Vitamin A also increases the risk of illness and death from common childhood infections like diarrhea or measles. For many developing countries without fortified foods, high-dose supplements remain the principal and best strategy for lowering cases of Vitamin A deficiency.

Our collective mission is to improve nutrition both across the globe and here at home, with a larger goal of providing 100 million children and mothers with essential vitamins worldwide. Starting now and carrying through 2017, Walgreens will donate one percent of retail sales from purchases of participating products to this cause. Taking wellness personally isn’t just something we all just talk about; it’s part of our DNA.

We hope you will join us! Over the next eight months, follow our efforts with the GOOD Wellness Project hashtag #GOODWellness, and keep an eye on our interactive infographic for tips on incorporating healthy choices into your own lives, and an exploration of the real-life positive effects of vitamin supplements. For more, follow @Walgreens and @VitaminAngels as we share stories of the #100MillionReasons campaign. Here, you can learn more about children across the globe suffering from ‘hidden hunger,’ and how they’re finally gaining access to the vitamins they need to be well.

Sincerely,

Crystal Fouchard

Marketing Director, Health and Wellness
Walgreens

The GOOD Wellness Project is an eight-month collaboration with Walgreens and Vitamin Angels, in support of the #100MillionReasons initiative to bring vital micronutrients to 100 million malnourished children across the globe by 2017. In order to gain clarity and raise awareness about health and well-being, we are diving into vitamins, alternative medicine, the effects of the environment on our body systems, and more, to provide a deeper understanding of what it looks like to live a healthy, well-balanced life.